Urine for Big Hydrogen Surprise

It's a long-standing energy riddle: Hydrogen can be burned as a clean source of energy, and it is easy to make hydrogen from water, but it takes more energy to make hydrogen than it contains as a fuel. In other words, hydrogen is great stuff, but it costs too make it.

A professor at Ohio University may have cracked the hydrogen code, however, and it is a humble waste product — urine, both human and animal — that she is using to do it.

A new report out from physorg.com says that Gerardine Botte, an assistant professor in chemical engineering, has developed an electrolytic process to pull hydrogen from urine at a fraction of the cost of stripping hydrogen from water.

According to an article in Chemistry World, "urine's major constituent is urea, which incorporates four hydrogen atoms per molecule ... less tightly bonded than the hydrogen atoms in water molecules. Botte uses electrolysis to ... break the molecule down" at a voltage less than 20 percent of that needed to split water.

Botte told Chemistry World that she "believes the technology could be easily scaled-up to generate hydrogen while cleaning up the effluent from sewage plants. 'We do not need to reinvent the wheel as there are already electrolysers being used in different applications.'”

If it delivers on its promise, Botte's process could help "not only fuel the hydrogen-powered cars of the future, but could also help clean up municipal waste water."

Photo of fuel cell courtesy of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab.